Take a virtual tour of Quincy's Hancock Cemetery

Residents may someday be able to tour Quincy’s oldest graveyard without leaving the comfort of their homes. City planners are in the process of making Hancock Cemetery’s 940 grave markers and monuments and 85 tombs available for viewing online via Google Maps.

Residents may someday be able to tour Quincy’s oldest graveyard without leaving the comfort of their homes.

City planners are in the process of making Hancock Cemetery’s 940 grave markers and monuments and 85 tombs available for viewing online via Google Maps. Some of Quincy’s earliest settlers, including political and religious leaders, are buried in the cemetery, which dates to the 1630s.

“If you clicked on the coordinates (of a burial plot), a picture of the particular element, whether it’s a grave marker or a tombstone, would come up and you could see if there is name inscribed on it,” said Kristina Johnson, the city’s director of transportation planning.

The digitalization of Hancock Cemetery, in downtown Quincy across from the Church of the Presidents, is part a bigger plan by the city to preserve the cemetery. Last year, the city hired Halvorson Design Partnership of Boston with $41,500 in Community Preservation Act money to study the cemetery and come up with a detailed conservation master plan.

Halvorson compiled an inventory of all grave sites, including each plot’s geographic coordinates. With this information, the city will essentially create a virtual tour of the cemetery available for viewing on Google Maps.

Johnson said she wasn’t sure when the Google Maps project would be finished.

In addition to taking inventory, Halvorson identified the grave sites, trees and fencing that were in most need of treatment or repair. The designer recommended more than $646,000 in projects.

Johnson said the city has already committed $66,000 to treat the markers and tombs in the worst shape, thanks to a $33,000 grant from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The rest will be funded with Community Preservation Act money.

“We have to spend the (grant) money by 2014, so you’ll see at least some work start, or at least some mobilization, by this fall or early winter,” Johnson said.